China Mobile

A top executive at China Mobile reportedly said this week that the largest wireless carrier in the world doesn't yet know when they will start selling the iPhone 6, saying the provider is concentrating on selling cheap no-contract smartphones this quarter.

Apple's new iPhone partnership with China Mobile looks to be off to a good start with the carrier announcing it added around 1 million iPhone customers to its 4G network in just February alone. Better still, the iPhone accounted for the large majority of customers joining China Mobile's 4G service.

Both Apple and China Mobile have put a ton of work into getting a partnership off the ground, and as of today the hard work pays off as sales of the iPhone on the worlds largest carrier finally begin. Apple CEO Tim Cook joined his counterpart from China Mobile, Xi Guohua at the carriers headquarters store in Beijing, handing out autographed iPhones in the process.

Apple's iPhone finally goes on sale on China Mobile – the worlds largest carrier – this coming Friday, and ahead of this CEO Tim Cook has joined his counterpart from Apple's latest carrier partner for a small media briefing. Pre-orders have been going extremely well, and Cook is said to be "incredible optimistic" as reports the Wall Street Journal:

The long rumored Apple and China Mobile deal is rumor no longer - the iPhone will be hitting the world's largest carrier starting January 17, 2014. Here are the relevant quotes from Xi Guohua, chairman of China Mobile, and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple:

China Mobile, China's biggest wireless provider, is still in discussions with Apple to carry the iPhone. There's broad speculation in the cell industry that the two companies are about to announce a deal, according to Reuters.

Tim Cook has predicted that, eventually, China would become Apple's largest market. So far so good. According to a study by Counterpoint, which is referenced in this post by Marketwatch, Apple's share of the smartphone market in China rose to 12% in October. This is up from only 3% in September, which is an incredible increase.

Based on the pace of growth of iPhone sales in China Counterpoint said:

This might allow Apple to even reach the No. 1 smartphone player in December or January in China.

Now everything is out in the open, it's not that surprising that the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c has been spotted on display in at least one China Mobile store, but it does make it all that little bit more real. Better yet, according to PRC, the iPhone is already starting to take over the display space:

The much storied arrival of the iPhone on the worlds largest carrier, China Mobile, looks set to reach its conclusion as soon as this week according to a new report. According to the Wall Street Journal, pre-orders of the iPhone will be going live in Shanghai this coming Thursday:

Apple has reportedly signed a deal for China Mobile, the world's largest carrier, to start selling the iPhone later in December. China Mobile's rival carriers, China Telecom and China Unicom, have been selling the iPhone for years already. The rollout is expected to coincide with the launch of China Mobile's 4G network on December 18, according to the Wall Street Journal.